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If you have an sort of a services subscription with a company and they are dissolved during liquidation -- the most frequent outcome is that the service is no l

If you have an sort of a services subscription with a company and they are dissolved during liquidation -- the most frequent outcome is that the service is no longer available for any price. The business is gone. If you had a landscaper mowing your lawn and they die, nobody expects the person who buys the lawnmower at the estate sale to continue mowing everyone's lawn. This isn't any different just because it is a different type of service. Cloud platforms are services and like any other business, they disappear... a lot.

tobr 1y ago
It’s more like if they sold you a lawnmower, but kept the key to start it, and now they’re dead, and someone bought their key cabinet.
- kube-system 1y ago
  In my analogy, the lawnmower is the cloud server, and your sod is your smart hub. But forget the analogy. Cloud services are services. If you buy a device that requires continued services to operate, and the service goes away, it doesn’t operate. People might be mad about this, but I’m sure everyone on this forum is smart enough to realize that servers don’t run themselves
  - Xss3 1y ago
    They didnt buy a device that requires connected services. It could work locally. That functionality has been removed in an 'upgrade'. They destroyed the lawnmower and now want you to rent one.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      That sounds awfully like a dependency on services to me. If the device is designed for somebody else to be managing and pushing out offer updates to it on your behalf, that’s a service. I wouldn't buy a lawnmower where normal operation of the device let somebody else change it whenever they feel like it.
      - EMIRELADERO 1y ago
        The point is that the dependency is artificial. The user you responded to said it wasn't sold as a service, as it had local functionality that was removed post-sale. The customer didn't buy access to a service with a physical product to serve as support for that service, they purchased functionality, and that functionality is (potentially illegally) being taken away from them.
        kube-system 1y ago
        I understand why people are mad. I just don’t understand why anyone here is surprised. Nor is there really anything unique about artificial proprietary lock-in when it comes to services. As a business practice it’s not uncommon.
        EMIRELADERO 1y ago
        > I just don’t understand why anyone here is surprised. Are they? To me it looks like legitimate complaints and only that. > Nor is there really anything unique about artificial proprietary lock-in when it comes to services. As a business practice it’s not uncommon. It's unique in its illegallity. They're lucky these aren't very expensive products, or people would actually go to court and maybe force the manufacturer's hand for once.
        kube-system 1y ago
        I don't know about the home jurisdiction of this company, but I don't see any reason why this would be illegal in the US. Typically most cloud products outline in their terms that services and their features may change at any point.
        EMIRELADERO 1y ago
        The illegality lies on the fact that the product was advertised as having certain functionality on its own. > Typically most cloud products outline in their terms that services and their features may change it at any point. The user bought the device before ever agreeing to any terms. At that point they're inherently entitled to the advertised functionality, merely by having their money change hands. Any post-sale agreement is separate from the purchase of the product that was informed by the advertisements.
  - true_religion 1y ago
    People are just mad that services which aren't essential to operation are being used to force people into subscriptions, or to enable features which could've been implemented without the server (and thus without the additional cost to the company). Like with Nest going EOL. There's no reason that it needed a wifi connection to operate. The server doesn't hold any useful information and just proxies instructions to your nest device when you use the app. It would have been nice if rather than wifi being used to communicate with googles' servers, wifi was just used to communicate with your app on your device via the local network. Or bluetooth was available as a fallback.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      Yeah, it’s buyers remorse. Buy devices that rely on cloud services, and you are at the mercy of that continued service. I just find it absolutely wild that some seem to be surprised by this in a technical forum of all places. I’m a nest early adopter affected by the nest EOL. I presume you mean: there’s no reason it needs a cloud service? Because it definitely needs network access for you to connect to it remotely. But if you are familiar at all with the history of IOT devices, the reason why cloud connected devices took off in popularity, is because they do NAT traversal for you. Most people struggled to set these devices up before the advent of cloud IOT.
like_any_other 1y ago
Let's not conflate the cloud service, with locking the devices from their users and preventing even non-cloud-functionality. It's like if the landscaper tried charging me for using my own lawnmower, myself.
- kube-system 1y ago
  If you can use the box without the service, just do it. I think the actual answer is that you can't. Just because the technology is there in such a way that it theoretically could, doesn't mean that is actually what you bought.
  - like_any_other 1y ago
    > If you can use the box without the service, just do it. They prevented that by locking the boxes, and threatened prosecution to someone trying to undo those locks: Futurehome CEO threatens police action after I offer $5,000 bounty to free his ransomed customers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSkwh3nWv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSkwh3nWv8
    - kube-system 1y ago
      If you buy a device that remotely executes code as a matter of normal operation, there isn’t anything local about it.

tobr 1y ago

It’s more like if they sold you a lawnmower, but kept the key to start it, and now they’re dead, and someone bought their key cabinet.

kube-system 1y ago
In my analogy, the lawnmower is the cloud server, and your sod is your smart hub. But forget the analogy. Cloud services are services. If you buy a device that requires continued services to operate, and the service goes away, it doesn’t operate. People might be mad about this, but I’m sure everyone on this forum is smart enough to realize that servers don’t run themselves
- Xss3 1y ago
  They didnt buy a device that requires connected services. It could work locally. That functionality has been removed in an 'upgrade'. They destroyed the lawnmower and now want you to rent one.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    That sounds awfully like a dependency on services to me. If the device is designed for somebody else to be managing and pushing out offer updates to it on your behalf, that’s a service. I wouldn't buy a lawnmower where normal operation of the device let somebody else change it whenever they feel like it.
    - EMIRELADERO 1y ago
      The point is that the dependency is artificial. The user you responded to said it wasn't sold as a service, as it had local functionality that was removed post-sale. The customer didn't buy access to a service with a physical product to serve as support for that service, they purchased functionality, and that functionality is (potentially illegally) being taken away from them.
      - kube-system 1y ago
        I understand why people are mad. I just don’t understand why anyone here is surprised. Nor is there really anything unique about artificial proprietary lock-in when it comes to services. As a business practice it’s not uncommon.
        EMIRELADERO 1y ago
        > I just don’t understand why anyone here is surprised. Are they? To me it looks like legitimate complaints and only that. > Nor is there really anything unique about artificial proprietary lock-in when it comes to services. As a business practice it’s not uncommon. It's unique in its illegallity. They're lucky these aren't very expensive products, or people would actually go to court and maybe force the manufacturer's hand for once.
        kube-system 1y ago
        I don't know about the home jurisdiction of this company, but I don't see any reason why this would be illegal in the US. Typically most cloud products outline in their terms that services and their features may change at any point.
        EMIRELADERO 1y ago
        The illegality lies on the fact that the product was advertised as having certain functionality on its own. > Typically most cloud products outline in their terms that services and their features may change it at any point. The user bought the device before ever agreeing to any terms. At that point they're inherently entitled to the advertised functionality, merely by having their money change hands. Any post-sale agreement is separate from the purchase of the product that was informed by the advertisements.
- true_religion 1y ago
  People are just mad that services which aren't essential to operation are being used to force people into subscriptions, or to enable features which could've been implemented without the server (and thus without the additional cost to the company). Like with Nest going EOL. There's no reason that it needed a wifi connection to operate. The server doesn't hold any useful information and just proxies instructions to your nest device when you use the app. It would have been nice if rather than wifi being used to communicate with googles' servers, wifi was just used to communicate with your app on your device via the local network. Or bluetooth was available as a fallback.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Yeah, it’s buyers remorse. Buy devices that rely on cloud services, and you are at the mercy of that continued service. I just find it absolutely wild that some seem to be surprised by this in a technical forum of all places. I’m a nest early adopter affected by the nest EOL. I presume you mean: there’s no reason it needs a cloud service? Because it definitely needs network access for you to connect to it remotely. But if you are familiar at all with the history of IOT devices, the reason why cloud connected devices took off in popularity, is because they do NAT traversal for you. Most people struggled to set these devices up before the advent of cloud IOT.

like_any_other 1y ago

Let's not conflate the cloud service, with locking the devices from their users and preventing even non-cloud-functionality. It's like if the landscaper tried charging me for using my own lawnmower, myself.

kube-system 1y ago
If you can use the box without the service, just do it. I think the actual answer is that you can't. Just because the technology is there in such a way that it theoretically could, doesn't mean that is actually what you bought.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > If you can use the box without the service, just do it. They prevented that by locking the boxes, and threatened prosecution to someone trying to undo those locks: Futurehome CEO threatens police action after I offer $5,000 bounty to free his ransomed customers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSkwh3nWv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSkwh3nWv8
  - kube-system 1y ago
    If you buy a device that remotely executes code as a matter of normal operation, there isn’t anything local about it.